Alix Ohlin - Signs and Wonders

“I wish,” Mike said drily.

“No kidding,” Sam said, then opened the door, got out, and waved at him exuberantly, even though they were only a few feet apart.

At home Diana was making Sunday brunch, which they ate while reading separate sections of the newspaper. She used to tell him about the day’s sermon, until she realized he wasn’t listening. He couldn’t help it; he just tuned out. She’d grown up in the Moravian church, whereas his childhood Sundays in Ohio were devoted to football games on TV. By now they had a truce on the subject. When he was finished clearing the plates and loading the dishwasher, he found Diana on the couch in the living room, not doing anything, just sitting. She was thin and dark haired, as was Lauren. She sewed quilts and gardened and coached Lauren’s old softball team — all that on top of working twenty hours a week in the school-board office.

She glanced up and saw him in the doorway. “Come here,” she said.

They sat together on the couch, Diana’s legs flung over his, her head against his shoulder. After a while he turned on the TV and they watched the end of a John Wayne movie. Diana fell asleep holding his hand.

Summers he generally spent fixing up the house, lucky to have learned these skills from his dad, a contractor. This year he was redoing the bathroom on the first floor. One day he and Diana were at Home Depot picking out fixtures when suddenly she grabbed him and pulled him into the next aisle, flattening him against a rack of lamps, pressing against him.

He could smell her shampoo and feel her hummingbird heartbeat against his chest. A chandelier dug into his back. “What are you doing?” he said, laughing.

She shushed him, lowering her face, and he put his arms around her, wondering if she was upset about the bathroom. But they’d planned the renovation even when they thought Lauren would soon be off to college; they needed it for when family came to visit. When Diana finally released him, her eyes were dry, her cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s the Kents.”

Gazing over her shoulder, he saw Sam’s parents browsing through the lawn mowers. They were kind, smart people, both doctors. After the accident they’d come by regularly, bringing food and flowers, eyes soft with pity, but Diana had stopped returning their calls. “It just makes me feel worse,” she’d said. This was why he didn’t tell her that he took their daughter with him to the hospital every Sunday. It was the only secret he kept from her.

They hid in the lighting aisle until the Kents were gone.

The following Sunday, he picked Sam up again, read to Lauren, and drove Sam home. In front of her house, she said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“When I go away to college …” Her voice drifted off.

She had a scab on her right knee, like a younger child, and she’d been picking at it; it looked angry and infected, blood oozing out. If she were Lauren, he’d be on her case about it. He waited for her to go on.

She looked vacantly out the window and said, “Should I, like, write to Lauren?”

Gripping the steering wheel, he turned away. They’d never once talked about the accident or how they felt about it. It was what had made their Sundays so comfortable. When he spoke, he was surprised by how unsteady his voice was. “It’s up to you,” he said. Carefully, then, he brought his voice under control, adopting his teacher’s tone. “If it would make you feel good, then I don’t see why not. I could read the letters to her.”

She blew out a puff of air, spraying her bangs out to the side. “It’s just weird, like we said we’d keep in touch, so I feel like I should, but I don’t really think she can hear me. And even if she could, wouldn’t she be pissed? That I’m going to college and she’s not?”

“I don’t think she would,” Mike said. The truth was in the car between them: that Lauren didn’t have the faculty for anger, that college meant nothing to her now. The thought sank him. It was like going down in an elevator into a dark, cool basement so deep beneath the earth that you might forget you could ever come back up. Forget that you’d ever seen the sun. When he was in that place, Diana said he was unreachable. Lost. So far away, in fact, that he didn’t notice at first that Samantha was crying, sniffling bubbles of snot that she wiped away with the back of her hand. He wished Diana were here; she’d have handed her a tissue and given her a hug. He patted the girl’s shoulder awkwardly. “It’s okay,” he said.

“I feel like it’s all my fault,” the girl said.

“It’s not,” he said, then paused. “Right?”

The events leading up to the accident had always been mysterious. Sam, who’d been sitting in the back, was the only one who’d come out of it intact. The boy died at the scene. At first, the doctors said that Lauren would be all right, that they could relieve the pressure on her brain. Later, they’d changed their minds.

And now Samantha was next to him, her eyes wild and red, her chin trembling spastically. After the accident, she’d been so upset that no one had been able to get anything out of her. Later, she said she didn’t remember any of it. Sometimes Mike had wanted to shake the memory out of her. But he’d tried to let it go; knowing what had happened wouldn’t undo it.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s all right.”

She took a deep breath, then hiccuped. Not knowing what else to do, he took a card from his wallet — it was from a plumber they’d used last year — and wrote his cell phone number on the back. “You can call me anytime,” he said.

She took it gratefully, seeming relieved to have something to hold, and put it in her pocket, smiling at him through her sloppy bangs. “Thanks,” she said.

That week he worked on the bathroom, stripping out the tile and removing the old toilet and sink, and ferrying it all to the landfill. The summer was densely humid, and his sweaty clothes stuck to him. At night, his muscles ached. He was deep asleep on the following Friday when his phone rang. It took him a while to understand what was happening, and then to remove the mouth guard so he could speak. When he finally flipped the phone open, he heard only music, some pulsing dance beat.

“Who is this?” There was a scuffling sound, followed by jagged breathing. “Samantha?” he said. “Is that you?”

“Can you come get me, please?” she said.

He looked at the clock; it was past two. “Tell me where you are.”

She gave him an address in South Bethlehem, not far from Lehigh. Maybe she was at some party with college kids. He got his keys, then paused by Diana’s closed door, wondering if he should tell her; but she wasn’t sleeping well lately, and he didn’t want to ruin her whole night.

Though she’d called from what sounded like a party, the ramshackle duplex he pulled up in front of was quiet. He’d thought she’d be outside waiting for him, but she wasn’t. He sighed. Lauren had never done anything like this. Grudgingly he climbed the splintered wooden stairs and peered in the window. A couple of guys were lying on couches, watching TV, no one else in sight. He knocked, and when he got no reaction, he assumed they were stoned or something worse. Now worried, he opened the door and went in.

“Don’t you knock?” one of them said. The other stayed riveted to the TV. They looked to be in their twenties, one white, one Hispanic, both skinny, slouched on their threadbare couches, their jeans riding down to expose their underwear, their arms sleeved in tattoos.

“I did,” said Mike. “I’m looking for Samantha.”

The guy who’d spoken shrugged, and the other still hadn’t moved.

Giving up, Mike headed to the empty kitchen, then moved upstairs. If the first floor was unadorned, the second was battered, littered with beer cans overflowing with cigarette butts. In one room there was only a bare mattress on the floor. His pulse quick and angry, he opened the next door and saw a fat man in a white tank top ministering to a sick person in a bed. Then his eyes readjusted, and he understood the man was pulling up Sam’s dress. Her eyes were closed, her arms flopped out to the side. A strand of her long blond hair was caught in her mouth, foam flecked on her chin.